Apple don’t have much luck with batteries, do they? First, the iPod batteries were too weedy to play tunes for a day, now the G4 Powerbook batteries are so beefy they overheat with a risk of fire with four cases of overheating reported worldwide.
Although no fires or injuries have yet to be reported, Apple have recalled 28,000 batteries from the popular 15” laptop range, as some of the units manufactured in the last week of December 2003 may short circuit and overheat. I wonder who was on the production line that week? Too many Christmas parties? The laptops themselves would have been sold between January and August 2004.
Apple have implemented a battery exchange programme in co-operating with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission and international safety authorities.
Users are urged to contact Apple with the serial number of their laptop to see if they might be at risk. Apple will then ship a new battery to the customer free within five days, and provide a label to return the faulty unit.
The A1045 batteries were manufactured by LG Chem Ltd, and have series numbers beginning with HQ404 to HQ408. No other batteries are part of the recall.
Apple’s battery exchange
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Fraser Lovatt
Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people.Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon.At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC.After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video.These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?
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